(81bk) Risk – Based Inspection (RBI). A Real Benefit?

RBI is a quantitative methodology for planning inspection, it requires a tough effort and it takes an important amount of time to realize it, and in some cases it seems to be expensive (initial cost). But, does it worth it? Is there a real benefit on applying RBI? In order to evaluate the benefit that could be achieved and visualize it, is necessary to keep in mind several aspects, such as:

a) Risk-based inspection should be seen as an integral part of an asset management system. An asset management system would require not only the plan, but the plan implementation as well. RBI implementation is more important than planning, and,

b) RBI requires many organization changes, changes from the owners and managers to the rest of the personal inside the organization. It also requires a clear understanding about risk management using inspection plans.

The benefit of using RBI as a risk management strategy is achieved through the inspection plan application, data analysis and strategy reassessment in order to evaluate, control and monitoring the failure mechanism that could lead to a mechanical integrity failure and the release of highly hazardous chemicals. Also, benefits could be expected in risk reduction and cost-benefit ratio. The cost-benefit should be the most important performance indicator for the inspection plan, is very important to have inspections plans less expensive than the risk reduction achieved. A cost ? benefit ratio should exist for every inspection plan for every dollar we expend, we should get a positive return on our investment and this will make our plans worth doing, as any other engineering investment. Is very important to be able to demonstrate this benefit, because we need to convince our management CEO's. Just to expressed in a more colloquial way. Are you able to buy something, without expecting some benefit? Who does that? Nobody?I hope so!

Besides the economic benefits, which should represent a balance between the inspection costs and the risk reduction, there are some other important technical benefits that should be evaluated also, such as:

?Failure mechanism monitoring

?Risk drivers control

?In line inspection prior to intrusive one

?Inspection focuses on high risk components

?Proactive inspection planning

This paper presents the results for developing RBI on 20 offshore platforms (production, gas compression and gathering) located in the bay of Campeche and the expected benefits.